


the covers drawn around

by ohwickedsoul



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types
Genre: Getting Together, M/M, Nightmares, Pining, and there was only one bed, oh my god there was only one bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-26
Updated: 2020-10-26
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:46:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27215902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohwickedsoul/pseuds/ohwickedsoul
Summary: Ed is twenty-two and has known Roy Mustang for almost half his life, and has watched him claw and scratch his way up the ranks of bureaucracy, has watched him send gouts of flame on trust alone, has seen him broken down in the rain and bright eyed in the sun. Ed knows that Roy Mustang is, at his heart, a good man.This fact, although Ed- ah,appreciatessaid fact, is going to make this a lot harder than it needs to be.
Relationships: Edward Elric/Roy Mustang
Comments: 22
Kudos: 331





	the covers drawn around

Roy Mustang watches him. 

Then again, Roy Mustang watches _everybody_.

Ed has known his eyes on him since he was thirteen, furious at the world and clanking with every step. They were calculating then- shit, Ed says _then_ like they’re not calculating now. But it was worse then, with how cold they were and the smirk beneath them that Ed wanted to break with his fist. The metal one. 

Ed is not thirteen anymore. 

Ed is twenty-two and fucking _brilliant_ , lectures at the university that Alphonse goes to because he’s still the best in his field even when he can only work in theory. His foot still clanks with every step, because nothing is perfect. 

And Roy Mustang watches him. 

It’s different now, and Ed spends a pleasurable few weeks cataloguing that difference- observable phenomena, hypothesis-variable-experiment. 

Roy’s eyes narrow a little when Ed flirts, albeit badly, with his secretary. He avoids eye contact twelve percent more than usual when Ed forgoes his coat and paces his office in his tank top, both arms skin and bone and muscle and bared to the world. His eyes widen a fraction the one time Ed undoes his hair one late night and combs it out with his fingers. 

Ed watches Roy watch the movement of his hands- flesh and blood and tendons, and Ed will never take their blunt fingertips and short nails for granted- and thinks. 

Ed is not thirteen, and even when he was he wasn’t thirteen the way other boys were. Ed has packed several lifetimes worth of living into a few short years, and at twenty-two feels, if not completely steady on his feet, damn near close to it. It is very hard to knock him off balance. 

Every time Roy Mustang _looks_ at him like that, like he is considering taking Ed apart to the atoms to see how he works, Ed feels unsteady. 

Ed is twenty-two and has known Roy Mustang for almost half his life, and has watched him claw and scratch his way up the ranks of bureaucracy, has watched him send gouts of flame on trust alone, has seen him broken down in the rain and bright eyed in the sun. Ed knows that Roy Mustang is, at his heart, a good man. 

This fact, although Ed- ah, _appreciates_ said fact, is going to make this a lot harder than it needs to be. 

“I think you should do what you want, brother,” Alphonse says, calm and with one of his six- six!- cats curled up on his lap. “You of all people deserve it.”

“Yeah, well,” Ed says, a little off guard. “I mean. There’s the age difference.”

“You are the oldest person I know, and I’m friends with Ms. Perkins who is approaching her ninety second birthday,” Al says, looking over the rims of his glasses. His glasses! He wears glasses now! For reading, mostly, but Ed revels in the failings of Al’s human body with more glee than is probably appropriate. 

“I resent that,” Ed says. 

“You’re about of height, too,” Al says. 

“Fuck you.”

So there is Al’s implicit blessing, which is a relief that Ed didn’t know he was looking for, and Mustang is _definitely_ on board, even though Ed knows it’ll be a pain to get him to admit it, so it’s really only Ed himself who is standing in the way. 

There is, however, the question of the Führer-ship, the thing Roy has been working most of his life for. There are elections in less than a year, and although Ed is not exactly- _well-versed_ in social graces, he’s pretty sure that the guy who’s trying to become Führer shouldn’t be seen as fucking a guy half his age. 

Well. Ed can hope that he’ll be fucking a guy half his age. 

So Ed grits his teeth, and settles in to wait until after the election to commence his experiment. Ed is good at waiting- he doesn’t like it, but he’s done a hell of a lot of it at this point. 

Unfortunately, the universe has other plans. 

The universe being Riza Hawkeye, whom Ed is still much too scared of to even attempt to defy. It’s worse now, actually, now that he’s a little older and doesn’t have the bravado of youth, or, y’know, alchemy, to help protect himself. 

“I need you to go with the General,” she says, appearing in their apartment like she’s some sort of normal person. She’s not even in her uniform. It’s the most terrifying thing he’s ever seen.

“Why,” Ed asks. He’s draped over a couch with a massive headache from grading sixty-two papers for his basic alchemy course because his TA has fucked off to parts unknown to become a monk, or something. It’s almost definitely not his fault, not that anyone believes him. 

“Because I will not be available to go and watch his six, and you are the only other person he would trust to do their job. We cannot afford him to be distracted watching his own back on this one, Edward.”

When Riza pulls out his full name he knows it’s serious, and so Ed sighs and sits up and tries to level her with a glare. It works on his students, but he should know better than to try it on her. He does it anyway. “You think Mustang trusts me to watch his back?” He demands. Riza raises one eyebrow.

A good point. “Without alchemy?” Ed says, pulling out his secret weapon. 

“Yes,” is all Riza says. Damn her. She’s right. 

And so this is how Ed finds himself on a train to Creta, sitting opposite Brigadier General Mustang, who is currently staring out the window and providing a very nice view of his profile to anyone who would care to look. 

Ed is looking, though he’s not happy about it. 

“Are you going to glare at me the entire train ride?” Mustang asks, still gazing out the window like he’s some sort of- some sort of fucking romance novel guy, one of the one’s Alphonse has zero qualms about leaving all over the fucking house. 

“ _Yes_ ,” Ed says, a little viciously. Fuck. Draw it back a little. “Got a problem?” He adds. 

The opposite of what he wanted. Great. Mustang does turn to look at him at that, raises one eyebrow. Ed wonders if he practices that in the mirror. “Are you nervous?”

“For what?” Ed says, genuinely confused. 

The other eyebrow goes up. “The…meeting with Creta?” Mustang says, a little slowly, like he’s unsure. 

“Oh, that.” Ed shrugs. “Not really. You’ll just equivocate and bullshit and flatter them to pieces and we’ll walk away three days later with everything we want and a month from now they’ll wake up and realize you’re just real good at talking other people to death.”

Mustang’s eyebrows are now in his hairline. “Ah,” he says. “I think that might’ve been a compliment.”

Ed can feel the heat rising to his face. “Yeah, well,” he says, uncomfortable. “S’pose so.”

They get to stew in that for the rest of the train ride, which is fucking peachy as far as Ed’s concerned. He feels like the flush on his face takes years to fade, brought back anew by every time that he catches Mustang _looking_ at him, like he’s afraid that Ed’s going to vanish into thin air if he doesn’t check that he’s in his second-class train seat every twenty minutes or so. 

By the time they get into Creta, it’s almost eleven pm, Ed has worked himself into a bundle of nerves for no god damn reason, and he nearly snaps at the perfectly nice tax driver who takes them over to the hotel. 

He leaves a hefty tip in both thanks and guilt, and Mustang is looking at him the way he used to when Ed had hit another dead-end on the Philosopher’s Stone- like Ed might shake apart at the seams, and take the entire city with him. 

Ed can’t do that anymore- take cities with him. He doesn’t know if he misses having that much power, or if it’s better for someone who might miss it to not have it. 

“I’ll check us in,” Mustang says, and in between the lines, Ed can read, _There’s something wrong with you right now and I don’t want to expose you to more civilians for their sake and yours._

So Ed flops into an uncomfortable chair in the lobby and doesn’t- pout. Edward Elric doesn’t pout. But he does work up a hefty scowl, enough that an older woman clutches her purse a little closer when she passes him. 

Ed stews in that storm cloud for a good couple of minutes before he hears Mustang say, “I’m sorry?” In a very, very polite voice. 

_That_ voice Ed can also read, and he can read it so well that he’s out of the seat and at Mustang’s elbow before he even thinks the action through. 

“What’s up?” Ed says, addressing the question to Mustang but trying to give a reassuring smile to the woman behind the front desk. She doesn’t know enough to be terrified. 

“I’ve been told that our esteemed hosts only booked us one room for the conference,” Mustang says, and _wow_ it’s shocking how scary he can make courtesy. “Which is incredibly shocking, as when I was invited by the organizers I specifically told them I would be traveling with an aide who would need their own room.”

The poor desk clerk is beginning to pale. Ed elbows Mustang, and he sort of- blinks, and looks down at Ed. God _damnit_. He looks- laterally, at Ed. Fuck. 

Ed can deal with that later. For now, he just says, “Weren’t you coming with Hawkeye, originally?” 

“Exactly why I am displeased,” Mustang says, coolly. “As they knew Lieutenant Hawkeye is the one I was bringing a long.”

So that’s why he’s pissed. Creta isn’t known for their glowing treatment of women, and some fuckhead up there must’ve taken a look at Roy’s overblown reputation, the F marked on Hawkeye’s paperwork, and drawn some spectacularly erroneous assumptions.

Ed’s actually pretty glad he came now- he thinks his presence may have managed to interrupt what surely would have been a breakdown in diplomatic communications when Hawkeye murdered someone. 

“Damn,” he says out loud. “Were they trying to get killed?”

The poor clerk, whose fault this is not, goes sheet pale. “Oh, fuck,” Ed says, not helping his case. “Shit, I’m sorry, this isn’t your fault-“

“It is not,” Mustang sighs deeply, and his hand twitches a little like if he weren’t in public, he’d pinch the bridge of his nose. “But, unfortunately, there are no other rooms available _because_ of the conference, and how late we’ve arrived.”

“I-I’m sorry, sir, I didn’t-“ the clerk stumbles. 

Ed waves a hand. Time for the whole ‘watching Mustang’s six’ to take affect. “It’s fine. Don’t worry about it, it’s not your fault. We can just share.”

Mustang actually whips his head to look at him, and Ed thinks that the look on his face might be the most honest he’s seen it in public in years. “I beg your pardon?”

Fuck, the flush is back. “What?” Ed shrugs. “You know how often I shared garbage little hotel rooms with Al and Ling or whomever else on that circus train of a trip we were riding with?”

“I’m sure I can’t imagine,” Mustang says, eyes still a little wide. He manages to wrangle himself back under control, however, and turns back to the clerk. “I suppose we will make do,” he says. 

The clerk, in a paroxysm of relief, slides two keys across to them and wishes them a really, really good day.

Ed feels a little bit better, knowing that they haven’t completely fucked some service workers entire day, but it washes away very quickly when they unlock their hotel room with the heavy metal keys. 

And see the single bed awaiting them. No couch. 

“Aw, fuck,” Ed says into the quiet of the room. It’s punctuated by the door shutting behind them with a too loud clunk, and Ed just about jumps out of his skin. 

“My apologies,” Mustang says, and there’s no good reason for his voice to be that quiet, like he’s trying to soothe a scared animal. 

“Not your fault,” Ed says, heart racing. “D-d’you mind if I take the first shower?” He blurts it out, a little terrified, needing the space and the time to just- think it out. 

When Mustang nods, Ed darts into the bathroom, pausing for the briefest second to snag his bag with the tips of his fingers. 

He sets the shower to run immediately, needing the minimal protection that the sound of running water would give him. He stares at himself in the rapidly fogging mirror. 

Hohenheim’s hated golden eyes stare back at him, and Ed bares his teeth at his reflection. This was _really_ not how this was supposed to go- there’s still six months till elections. Mustang cannot afford any distractions right now, and that’s- that’s what Ed is. A guard for his six and a distraction and a god damn disaster, most of the time, and he really cannot afford to be a disaster like this, not when they’re so close-

Roy Mustang is a liar, and a war criminal, and has so much fucking red in his ledger Ed thinks the book must drip with it, and he knows that Roy spends every day mopping it up anyway. Knows that Roy is going to be the best damn thing for Amestris, knows the country fucking needs someone like him at the top, scheming for _them_ , and Ed would be a selfish fucking bastard if he dared to take that away from them now. 

Ed’s knuckles go white where they grip the counter tops. He can’t afford to be selfish, not like this. 

When he walks out of the bathroom then minutes later, his hair wet and dark bronze around his shoulders, and he sees Roy Mustang on the edge of the bed, unmoving, head in his hands, Ed’s resolve crumples like wet paper. 

“Hey,” Ed says in a voice he almost doesn’t recognize- it’s used for Al after he has nightmares, or lost children, or the grieving. “Are you- okay?”

“I am not a good a man as I had hoped,” Mustang says, without lifting his head. 

Ed snorts, then winces. “I don’t think any one can meet your impossibly high standards,” he tries to cover. 

“Yes, well I-“ Mustang says, lifts his head, stops mid sentence. He just stares at Ed for a moment, and Ed has to grit his fucking teeth. “Never mind. May I?” He says, and stands. 

Ed nods, silent, and once Roy is in the bathroom, takes up Mustang’s post on the edge of the bed. God _damnit_. 

When Roy walks out of the bathroom, wiping water droplets off dark eyelashes, Ed’s wet paper resolve tears away almost entirely.

Almost. 

“I can take the flo-“ Roy is saying, and Ed sputters. 

“What? No the fuck you can’t, I’m not the one who has to verbally castrate Cretans tomorrow.”

Roy winces at the choice of word, but half a smile works its way onto his face. “It’s my-“

“Give it up, Mustang,” Ed snaps. “Either I’ll sleep on the floor or we’ll just split. It doesn’t matter if I don’t get any beauty sleep.”

Roy presses his mouth together like he’s attempting to keep any words from escaping his mouth. “Fine,” he says after a moment. “We’ll share.”

It’s hell, Ed thinks only a little while later. It’s got to be hell, or purgatory, lying here in fucking agony knowing he can’t reach out and touch the man who lays with his back to him. This is so- unfair. Just another gut punch in his stacked fight of life. 

The instant he lets himself want something, lets himself have something- but not yet- the universe conspires to just wallop him upside the head with how much he wants but cannot have. 

Not yet, he promises himself, silently. Six months. You can make it six months without endangering anyone’s political career, or the trajectory of a country, or a diplomatic conference. You can. 

He falls asleep counting days to Amestris’ election. 

He wakes some unknown amount of time later to a familiar hitching breath, like the body can’t fully expand his lungs. He’s sat up and got a hand on Roy’s shoulder before he’s fully awake- Ed knows very well what nightmares sound like. 

He pulls hard on the shoulder that’s hunched around Roy’s ears, sends him sprawling onto his back. Roy’s eyes open at the jerk and his hand shoots out, straight for Ed’s neck.

Ed jerks back, and Roy’s hand just grazes the skin of his throat. His eyes open a moment later, too wide, as he gasps in what sounds like a full breath. They register Ed, looming above him, and then blink rapidly. His forehead has a sheen of sweat, and the broken-open expression on his face makes him look- younger. 

Young in a frightened, ill-used way, and Ed knows that he himself is young, too young to have done what he did, but he always forgets that- Roy Mustang was young once, too. Still is, in some respects- thirty-five is shockingly young for having done what he’s done. 

He forgets that Roy Mustang saw war at not at thirteen, but nineteen- was used as a biological bomb, a human weapon, decried as a war criminal by the time he was twenty two. 

Looking at Roy’s eyes, dark and reflecting almost no light, Ed finds that he cannot forget that now. 

“Ed,” Roy says, and the hand reaching for Ed’s throat drops. It thunks heavy on the mattress like Roy cannot bear to keep it up. 

“Yeah,” Ed says, croaks, whispers. “It’s just me, it’s okay. You’re safe, you’re okay.” Roy’s breathing begins to slow, forcibly, and Ed knows he’s bringing his heart rate down by sheer will. He comes up onto his elbows, and he’s very pale, even in the dark. “You’re okay.”

“I’m sorry,” Roy says, his eyes closed, and when he opens them again they’re very awake, and focused on Ed’s face. “I didn’t think I-“

“You think you’re the only one who has nightmares, Roy?” Ed says softly. 

Roy swallows. “I suppose the monsters under your bed are worse than most,” he manages. 

It’s really not fair for the man to look like _this_ after a nightmare, open and soft. The walls around him are as low as Ed’s ever seen them, and the rest of his resolve wafts off in the wind from where they’d been caught on the barbed wire of his logic. 

“Roy,” Ed says again, and can’t think to say anything else. 

“If only I’d known that night terrors would be the thing to get you to call me by my first name,” Roy says, his mouth quirking up at the corner, and Ed leans down and kisses him just to get him to shut _up_.

He pulls back a second later, hovering above him again and looking down at Roy’s shocked expression, his slack mouth. Ed’s heart thuds against his ribs. Oh, fuck, had he read this- wrong? Had it been-

“Sorry,” he manages to get out, “sorry, I’m-“

Roy is sitting up then, fast enough that Ed’s one arm- the new flesh one, the weaker one- can’t quite support it and he goes down onto his elbow, stretched across Roy’s lap. This isn’t a bad place to be, per se, and Ed would really like to think about it later, but he can’t do a damn thing about it now because Roy is _kissing him back_. 

He’s almost desperate with how hard he kisses Ed, one hand in between his shoulder blades hauling him closer, the other sliding up his cheek and into his hair. Ed can’t do much but grab onto his collar and hang on, and when he gasps into his mouth Roy groans. 

After a moment Roy draws back the barest amount, knocks his forehead against Ed’s. Breathes in. “Sorry,” he says on a short breath, “I’m sorry, I just-“

“You fucked up my timeline,” Ed says, and is only a little embarrassed by how breathy his voice comes out. 

Roy draws back further- which is not what Ed wanted, what the fuck- and looks at him, disbelieving. There’s a smile, unwillingly starting to tug at the side of his mouth, and though there’s not much light in the room it’s enough for Ed to make out the slight furrow of his brow. “I- I’m sorry?”

“You say that a hell of a lot,” Ed grumbles, and pushes himself back up out of his half-reclined position. He hesitates for a moment, and then decides, fuck it, in for a pound or whatever, and maneuvers himself into Roy’s lap with only a small amount of awkwardness. 

It’s worth it, however, when Roy’s hands immediately settle on his hips and his face, just-

The sheer _wonder_ on it, visible even in the dark, makes Ed’s face heat up with a blush worse than when Roy had kissed him back. “ A timeline,” Ed says. “I wasn’t gonna make a move till you had won the election.”

“You planned this,” Roy said, a little faintly. Ed seems to have this affect on him a lot. “You had a schedule.”

“I mean, it wasn’t like, in my calendar,” Ed frowns. That’s a lie. It was absolutely in his calendar. “But, yeah. I didn’t want to, you know, distract you from the campaign and I figured it was best for your chances if you weren’t-“

It’s very easy in this position for Roy to kiss him, Ed discovers, as Roy cups his face in both hands and does so. 

“Do you have any idea,” Roy says against his mouth, “what utter hell the past few months have been for me?”

“What?” Ed says, dazed. 

“Thinking I was- some unrequited- Riza called me out for _pining_ , and you had a _schedule_ ,” Roy says, and he sounds delighted in between kissing the absolute life out of him. 

“Right,” Ed says. “Um. Sorry?”

Roy smooths his thumbs over his cheekbones, and Ed prays they don’t feel unnaturally hot- he’s hoping the dark is covering up a lot of his blush. “You’re a miracle, Edward Elric,” he says, low and very close. 

“Prat,” Ed says reflexively. “Oh fuck- I mean-“ 

Roy just laughs however, and kisses him again, and pulls Ed close in a way that makes his breath hitch. 

It is still the middle of the night, and Roy has Cretan diplomats to destroy in the morning and with reluctance they disentangle themselves. There’s a moment where they share a second of hesitance before Ed thinks, again _fuck it_ and tucks himself into Roy. 

Roy’s arms come up around him immediately, however, one hand stroking down his hair and another pressing a kiss to the top of his head. Ed hides his face in Roy’s neck even though he’s sure that Roy can’t see him. Just in case. 

“If you freak out in the morning, I’ll kill you,” Ed says quietly. 

“Alright,” Roy says back. “May I freak out in the afternoon, then?”

“No freaking out until the conference is done,” Ed says into Roy’s clavicle. Even his collarbones are pretty, the bastard. “I promised Hawkeye I would have your back and you wouldn’t be distracted.”

“Hmm,” Roy hums. Ed can feel the vibrations from where he’s got his cheek pressed against his hair. “I suppose that’s fair. Back in Amestris, then,” he says, and there’s the faintest upturn of a question there. 

Back in Amestris, where their lives were. Back in Amestris, where they wouldn’t be able to brush this off as a half-asleep night. Back in Amestris, where Roy was trying to be Führer.

“Fine,” Ed says. “You can have your little bitch fit back in Amestris.”

“Generous,” Roy says, but Ed can tell the adrenaline from the nightmare is finally leaving his system, as it’s almost-not-quite slurred. 

Ed’s fingers curl into the front of his shirt. “Really,” he says, quiet. “You don’t have to, though.”

“An act of faith against the night,” Roy says, so softly Ed wonders if he was meant to hear. 

He doesn’t say anything, however, and in the next few minutes Roy slides into the deep breathing of a soldier who can fall asleep anywhere, and his grip on Ed loosens the slightest bit. 

Ed stays awake, however, and thinks about the sea of knives they’ll be wading in to tomorrow, thinks about the ever-changing political landscape of Amestris, thinks about the spiral of self-hatred Roy will definitely slide into once they’re back in Amestris. 

Thinks about the glove with the flame array Roy didn’t put under his pillow. Because of Ed. 

Ed’s fingers tighten again, and he thinks, _fuck it_ , suddenly and viciously. Roy Mustang has watched him since he was thirteen- it’s time he started watching him right the fuck back. 

Ed has never made a habit of letting go of the things he wants, after all.

**Author's Note:**

> if you follow me on twitter, you know i've been talking about this bitch for ages.
> 
> this isn't actually the bitch, this is an entirely separate bitch that sprang fully formed while i hack away at the og bitch. hope you like it anyway. 
> 
> be safe, be healthy, be good. 
> 
> [my twitter](https://twitter.com/ohwickedsoul)


End file.
